Functional optical materials have utility in lasers, electronics, sensors, smart medical devices, point of care medical diagnostic devices, environmentally friendly coatings, switchable displays, forgery detection and other technologies. Various approaches have been disclosed in articles cited in Sorrell, C. D. et al., 2011, Color Tunable Poly (N-Isopropylacrylamide)-co-Acrylic Acid Microgel/Au Hybrid Assemblies, Adv. Funct. Mater. 21: 425-433; Sorrell, C. D., et al., 2011, Reflection order selectivity of color-tunable poly (N-isopropylacrylamide) microgel based etalons, Adv. Mater. 23:4088-4092; Sorrell, C. D., et al., 2011, A “Paint-On” Protocol for the Facile Assembly of Uniform Microgel Coatings for Color Tunable Etalon Fabrication, ACS Appl. Mater. Interf. 3: 1140-1147; Sorrell, C.D., et al., 2012, Glucose Sensitive Poly (N-Isopropylacrylamide) Microgel Based Etalons, Anal. Bioanal. Chem. 402:2385-2393; Hu, L., et al.,2012, Color Modulation of Spatially Isolated Regions on a Single Poly (N-isopropylacrylamide) Microgel Based Etalon, J. Mater. Chem. 22:8199-8202; Johnson, K.C.C., et al., 2012, Detecting Solution pH Changes Using Poly (N-Isopropylacrylamide)-co-Acrylic Acid Microgel-Based Etalon Modified Quartz Crystal Microbalances, Anal. Chim. Atca 739:83-88; Carter, M. C. D., et al., 2011, Deswelling Kinetics of Color Tunable poly (N-isopropylacrylamide) Microgel-based Etalons, J. Phys. Chem. B 115:14359-14368; Hu, L., et al., 2012, Poly (N-Isopropylacrylamide) Microgel-Based Etalons for Optical Sensing, J. Anal. Bioanal. Techniques 3:2; Hu, L., et al., 2012, Color-Tunable Etalons Assembled from Poly (N-Isopropylacrylamide) Based Microgels, Polymers 4:134-149 and elsewhere. The inventor provides a new class of functional optical materials for use in these and other applications. Each of these articles and their supplemental materials is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.